The next stop for Mac, Bob, and me was Chapel Hill, North Carolina, a university town known in those days—like Ann Arbor, Ithaca, Austin, Boulder, Berkeley, and similar hot spots—as a center for forward-thinking folks, a place where ideas, old and new, could steep. These were gathering places for young alternative types, often dubbed “freaks,” who, like us, were out of the mainstream, likely to be against the war in Vietnam, and who often traded in the razor and business suit for earthy pursuits such as out-of-the-ordinary folk music. Our contact in Chapel Hill was Bill Hicks, a fiddler whom Mac had met in the Bay Area a year or two earlier. Upon arrival we called Bill, who informed us that his band was having a get-together that night at Bobbie Thompson’s house, and that we would be welcome to participate.